p>Christopher, Vis­count Mon­ck­ton is a seri­ous ana­lyst and good fun: he has mas­tered the art of keep­ing it sim­ple and exag­ger­at­ing (a lit­tle bit). So I expect a big crowd, a great atmos­phere and some clever, con­vinc­ing, talk.

Reflect­ing on the greater influ­ence of the BRICS, recent­ly, in glob­al forums, the always-inter­est­ing Alan Beat­tie asks:

“Is this a piv­ot point such as the sec­ond world war, where the con­fi­dent, inno­v­a­tive US mus­cled aside the weak­ened, debt-laden economies of Europe and remade the glob­al finan­cial archi­tec­ture? ” Extract fromFT.com

His guess? “No, not yet”. He points out the BRICS are dom­i­nat­ed by one coun­try, Chi­na, that is still depen­dent on for­eign demand for its eco­nom­ic strength rather than on its domes­tic resources.

“A decade of rapid growth is not enough for the Brics to seize the baton of glob­al eco­nom­ic lead­er­ship from the US and west­ern Europe. The group­ing, or some of them, may have aston­ished the world with their progress over the past 10 years. But it will require a qual­i­ta­tive improve­ment as well as more growth to con­sol­i­date that shift of pow­er.”

In an accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle he argues:

“…Aside from the long-run­ning debate about giv­ing devel­op­ing coun­tries more votes in the IMF, it has proved hard to ham­mer out a sub­stan­tive set of sub­jects on which the dis­parate Bric coun­tries have the same inter­ests.” Extract fromFT.com

Beat­tie points out that for all their capac­i­ty joint­ly to wield influ­ence in glob­al forums, the BRICS do not have much in com­mon in their domes­tic pol­i­cy approach­es and few com­mon exter­nal inter­ests. This has been evi­dent in the Doha nego­ti­a­tions where India and Brazil, espe­cial­ly, have oppos­ing inter­ests in mat­ters such as agri­cul­tur­al trade lib­er­al­iza­tion, and at Copen­hagen where China’s inter­ests were not appar­ent­ly those of many devel­op­ing coun­tries; effec­tiv­el­ly sui gener­is. Beat­tie con­cludes that:

“In diplo­ma­cy, as in eco­nom­ics, the pow­er wield­ed by the Bric coun­tries may end up being dis­tinct­ly weight­ed towards the wish­es of Bei­jing.”

I think all this is pret­ty sound. But…in my view we are wit­ness­ing, nonethe­less, a sec­u­lar change in glob­al gov­er­nance, to be marked by con­fu­sion, delay and irrel­e­vance for glob­al insti­tu­tions such as WTO that cling to a mode of “explic­it con­sen­sus” (as the Doha Dec­la­ra­tion puts it) in deci­sion-mak­ing. Such pre­sump­tive una­nim­i­ty or com­pli­ance is no longer like­ly except where the deci­sions con­cerned are inescapable—like those on the glob­al ‘stim­u­lus’ (or oth­er­wise triv­ial in a pol­i­cy sense, such as human­i­tar­i­an aid). The future seems, for now, to belong rather to pluri­lat­er­al deci­sion-mak­ing and insti­tu­tions in dif­fer­ent forms.

There is absolute­ly noth­ing new in U.S. exas­per­a­tion with the Unit­ed Nations and its overblown process­es. This state­ment from the deputy U.S. cli­mate envoy recalls the respons­es of thou­sands of tech­nocrats exposed for the first time to the diplo­mat­ic morass; for decades, we’ve heard some­thing sim­i­lar from every new Admin­is­tra­tion.

“Per­sh­ing said the flaws in the UN process, which demands con­sen­sus among the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, were exposed at Copen­hagen. ‘The meet­ing itself was at best chaot­ic,’ he said, in a talk at the Cen­tre for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies in Wash­ing­ton. ‘We met most­ly overnight. It seemed like we didn’t sleep for two weeks. It seemed a fun­ny way to do things, and it showed.’ ” Extract fromUN should be side­lined in future cli­mate talks, says Oba­ma offi­cial | The Guardian

What is new is that the so-called BASIC countries—giant, rapid­ly grow­ing but poor economies—have become the nec­es­sary inter­locu­tors of the USA and, per­force, for Europe, Japan and the rest of the twen­ty-some­thing coun­tries that have com­mit­ted to sign the ‘pledge’ on emis­sions cuts by 31 Jan­u­ary this year.

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p>Pershing goes on to say that he’s look­ing for a ‘crit­i­cal mass’ alter­na­tive:

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“[He] indi­cat­ed the focus would be nar­row­er in scope than the UN’s all-inclu­sive approach. “We expect there will be sig­nif­i­cant actions record­ed by major coun­tries,” he said. “We are not real­ly wor­ried what Chad does. We are not real­ly wor­ried about what Haiti says it is going to do about green­house gas emis­sions. ”

It is dif­fi­cult to believe that the com­plex, weak, con­fus­ing, rent-pre­serv­ing, pon­der­ous white-ele­phant being pro­posed for an agree­ment on agri­cul­ture in the WTO Doha nego­ti­a­tions could be more bloat­ed or fur­ther compromised…but that’s exact­ly what seems to be hap­pen­ing.

Accord­ing to a report* from ITCSD, devel­op­ing coun­tries and the EU want to fur­ther slow the pace of change where open­ing mar­kets for prod­ucts such as sug­ar, cut flow­ers, veg­etable oils, fruits and juices might threat­en some high­ly prof­itable deals between of a small group of EU importers and devel­op­ing coun­try exporters. So much for the poor old con­sumer!

“Trade sources told Bridges that this pro­vi­sion [to pre­serve tar­iff pref­er­ences] is meant to refer specif­i­cal­ly to sug­ar; how­ev­er, the lan­guage leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that oth­er prod­ucts, such as beef, could qual­i­fy as well. Specif­i­cal­ly, if mem­bers use a com­plex method­ol­o­gy called ‘par­tial des­ig­na­tion’ to select very spe­cif­ic prod­ucts, then it is pos­si­ble that those goods, which would not oth­er­wise receive pref­er­ence ero­sion treat­ment, might also qual­i­fy.” Extract fromICTSD Pref­er­ence Ero­sion List Marks ‘New Era’ in WTO Farm Talks

It’s time to kill this ugly beast of an agree­ment and to start again with a sim­pler deal among coun­tries that want open, com­pet­i­tive mar­kets. If the cur­rent Doha text ever gets off the table it will serve only to anchor the devel­op­ment and expan­sion of inter­na­tion­al food trade in the mor­bid swamps of its infa­mous­ly pro­tec­tion­ist past.

The Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of WTO goes on to claim that “…in the end, it is only through a mul­ti­lat­er­al process that we can achieve results which are legit­i­mate and cred­i­ble.” But this is an argu­ment seems to stand only when propped-up by jar­gon. Process­es? What are they? Agree­ments to a coher­ent sin­gle-frame­work for action? Only a weak one at best, and like­ly com­pro­mised by excep­tions, con­ces­sions and deals (qv Copen­hagen, Doha). Or are ‘process­es’ just talk?

The Pots­dam Insti­tute physi­cist whose 2007 paper Ross Gar­naut relied on for his asser­tion that “on the bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties” CO2-dri­ven warm­ing was accel­er­at­ing dan­ger­ous­ly, has been exposed as a sci­en­tif­ic gad­fly.

At the time of the pub­li­ca­tion of Garnaut’s inter­im report, sev­er­al well-qual­i­fied scep­tics dis­put­ed Rahmstorf’s pro­je­tions, includ­ing David Stock­well, Lucia Lil­je­gren and Steve McIn­tyre with strong sup­port from for­mer Aus­tralian sta­tis­ti­cian Ian Cas­tles. Ian also kind­ly sup­port­ed my request to the Sta­tis­ti­cal Soci­ety of Aus­tralia to eval­u­ate the Rahm­storf method­ol­o­gy in the inter­ests of bet­ter informed pub­lic debate on Garnaut’s rec­om­men­da­tions (they even­tu­al­ly declined).

Now, A UK Met Office researcher and oceanog­ra­phers have harsh­ly crit­i­cised Ste­fan Rahm­storf for his extrav­a­gant pre­dic­tion that warm­ing would lead to sea-lev­el ris­es of 1.88 meters by the end of the cen­tu­ry.

“Crit­ic Simon Hol­gate, a sea-lev­el expert at the Proud­man Oceano­graph­ic Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Mersey­side, has writ­ten to Sci­ence mag­a­zine, attack­ing Pro­fes­sor Rahmstorf’s work as ‘sim­plis­tic’.

Peter Gallagher

Peter Gallagher is student of piano and photography. He was formerly a senior trade official of the Australian government. For some years after leaving government, he consulted to international organizations, governments and business groups on trade and public policy.

He teaches graduate classes at the University of Adelaide on trade research methods and the role of firms in trade and growth and tweets trade (and other) stuff from @pwgallagher